dollar store kimono clown me a second jeff
—
anonymous rice a little bird’s elbow
—
the chef won’t cook it faint green glass
—
bio/graf
J. D. Nelson is the author of eleven print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *purgatorio* (wlovolw, 2024). His first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Christopher Bernard will be reading at the Poets for Palestine SF Marathon Reading at San Francisco’s Bird and Beckett Bookstore. For a donation of any amount to the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a nonpartisan and nonpolitical organization helping all children in the region, poets can come and read at any time at the store on October 14th, Indigenous People’s Day. Please feel welcome to sign up here or email poetsforpalestinesf@gmail.com to be scheduled.
This month’s issue addresses our fears and aspirations: whether life will become what we dread, or what we hope.
Wazed Abdullah revels in the joy of the Bangladesh monsoon as Don Bormon celebrates flowers and wispy clouds in autumn. Maurizio Brancaleoni contributes bilingual haiku spotlighting days at the beach, insects, cats, and the rain. Brian Barbeito shares the experience of walking his dogs as summer turns to fall.
Soren Sorensen probes and stylizes sunsets in his photography series. Lan Qyqualla rhapsodizes about love, dreams, flowers, colors, poetry, and harp music. Ilhomova Mohichehra poetically welcomes autumn to her land.
John L. Waters reviews Brian Barbeito’s collection of poetry and photography Still Some Summer Wind Coming Through, pointing out how it showcases nature and the “subtle otherworldly” within seemingly ordinary scenes. Oz Hartwick finds a bit of the otherworldly within his ordinary vignettes as he shifts his perspective.
Kelly Moyer crafts stylized photographic closeups of ordinary scenes, rendering the familiar extraordinary. Ma Yongbo paints scenes where ordinary life becomes unreal, suffused with images associated with horror.
Sayani Mukherjee speaks of a bird’s sudden descent into a field of flowers and comments on our wildness beneath the surface. Jake Cosmos Aller illustrates physical attraction literally driving a person wild.
Mesfakus Salahin asserts that were the whole natural world to become silent, his love would continue. Mahbub Alam views life as a continual journey towards his beloved. Tuliyeva Sarvinoz writes tenderly of a mother and her young son and of the snow as a beloved preparing for her lover. Sevinch Tirkasheva speaks of young love and a connection that goes deeper than looks. llhomova Mohichehra offers up tender words for each of her family members. She also expresses a kind tribute to a classmate and friend.
Meanwhile, rather than describing tender loving affection, Mykyta Ryzhykh gets in your face with his pieces on war and physical and sexual abuse. His work speaks to the times when life seems to be an obscenity. Z.I. Mahmud looks at William Butler Yeats’ horror-esque poem The Second Coming through the lens of Yeats’ contemporary and tumultuous European political situation.
Alexander Kabishev’s next tale of life during the blockade of St. Petersburg horrifies with its domestic brutality. Almustapha Umar weeps with grief over the situations of others in his country.
In a switch back to thoughts of hope, Lidia Popa speaks to the power of poetry and language to connect people across social divides. Hari Lamba asserts his vision for a more just and equal America with better care for climate and ecology. Perizyat Azerbayeva highlights drip irrigation as a method to tackle the global problem of a shortage of clean drinkable water. Eldorbek Xotamov explores roles for technology and artificial intelligence in education.
Elmaya Jabbarova expresses her hopes for compassion and peace in our world. Eva Petropoulou affirms that action, not mere pretty words, are needed to heal our world.
Ahmad Al-Khatat’s story illustrates the healing power of intimate love after the trauma of surviving war and displacement. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reflects on the healing calm of silence after war.
Meanwhile, Christopher Bernard showcases the inhumanity of modern warfare in a story that reads at first glance like a sci-fi dystopia. Daniel De Culla also calls out the absurdity of war and the grossness of humor in the face of brutality.
Pat Doyne probes the roots of anti-Haitian immigrant rumors in Springfield, Ohio and critiques fear-mongering. Jorabayeva Ezoza Otkir looks to nature for metaphors on the corrosive nature of hate.
On a personal level, Nosirova Gavhar dramatizes various human responses to loss and trauma. Kendall Snipper dramatizes an eating disorder ravaging a woman’s life and body.
Donna Dallas’ characters are lonely, bruised by life, and drawn to what’s not good for them: drugs, bad relationships, lovers who don’t share their dreams. J.J. Campbell evokes his miserable life situation with dark humor.
Meanwhile, Maja Milojkovic savors each moment as she creates her own happiness through a positive attitude. In the same vein, Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa celebrates the power of a free and self-confident mind and the joy of spending time with small children.
Tuliyeva Sarvinoz urges us to move forward toward our goals with faith and dedication. Numonjonova Shahnozakhon echoes that sentiment, encouraging perseverance and resilience. S. Afrose resolves to move forward in life with optimism and self-respect.
Michael Robinson reflects on the peace he finds in his continuing Christian walk. Federico Wardal reviews anthropologist Claudia Costa’s research into spiritual fasting practices among the Yawanawa tribe in Brazil.
Duane Vorhees explores questions of legacy, inheritance, and immortality, both seriously and with humor. Isabel Gomes de Diego highlights Spanish nature and culture with her photographic closeups of flowers, religious icons, and a drawing made as a gift for a child’s parents. Federico Wardal highlights the archaeological findings of Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass and his upcoming return to San Francisco’s De Young Museum. Zarina Bo’riyeva describes the history and cultural value of Samarkand.
Sarvinoz Mansurova sends outlines from a conference she attended on Turkic-adjacent cultures, exploring her region as well as her own Uzbek culture.
Barchinoy Jumaboyeva describes her affection for her native Uzbekistan, viewing the country as a spiritual parent. Deepika Singh explores the mother-daughter relationship in India and universally through her dialogue poem.
David Sapp’s short story captures the feel of decades-ago Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday as it describes a dream meeting between lovers in Rome. Mickey Corrigan renders the escapades and tragedies of historical women writers into poetry.
Duane Vorhees draws a parallel between Whitman’s detractors and those who would criticize Jacques Fleury’s poetry collection You Are Enough: The Journey To Accepting Your Authentic Self for having a non-traditional style.
This set of poems from Jacques Fleury expresses a sophisticated childlike whimsy. A few other pieces carry a sense of wry humor. Daniel De Culla relates a tale of inadvertently obtaining something useful through an email scam. Taylor Dibbert reflects on our escapes and “guilty pleasures.”
Noah Berlatsky reflects on both his progress as a poet and editors’ changing tastes. Sometimes it takes growing and maturing over time as a person to create more thoughtful craft.
Alan Catlin strips artworks down to their bare essential elements in his list poetry, drawing attention to main themes. Mark Young focuses on kernels of experience, on the core of what matters in the moment. J.D. Nelson captures sights, experiences, and thoughts into evocative monostich poems worthy of another reading.
Kylian Cubilla Gomez’ pictures get close up to everyday miracles: a beetle, car components, action figures, a boy in a dinosaur costume.
We hope that this issue, while being open about the worries we face, is also a source of everyday miracles and thought-provoking ideas. Enjoy!
Love to family
My love to my family,
To my brother, sister, mother.
A piece for my dad too,
My way is a sidewalk.
I honor my father,
I respect my mother.
My brother and sister,
Of course I care.
Abdurrahman, Umida,
He respects me.
With kind words to me,
He tasted honey from his tongue.
Daddy loves me
He caresses and hugs.
what i say will do
What can I say?
My mother is kind,
Every word has magic.
My mother is my only one
The whole world is one piece.
My sister is surprised
My brother is a wrestler.
Inspiration cries to me,
A propeller in my head.
My family is my happiness
My throne in the world.
“Family is the holy place”
The words madhim-ku.
Ilhomova Mohichehra is a teacher of the 8th grade of the 9th general secondary school of Zarafshan city, Navoi region.
RAIN IN MY EYES
The rainbow appeared
behind the lines of rain,
the worries and troubles of stis,
carved verses
where the west burned,
in the braided flower,
we put a wreath.
You can’t see the rainbow
it didn’t rain a little,
in my eyes…!
AUTUMN LOVE IN PRISTINA
We met in the fall,
in the amphitheater you tweet…
the streets of Pristina,
in the cold night,
shoot me like a mountain fairy.
the stars were aligned
that summer evening in your tear,
we were both lost in the untouched oasis
and the lips stopped at the sounds FlokArtë.
Why did we travel, tell me why
in the cold winter and snow,
the beaming sun gave us a gift,
you ray of sunshine lit me siashra.
Why did we run to the meadows, why
in the early spring fragrance of love
we pray to the flowers of the green field,
embraced we felt exotic intoxication.
THE POET’S MUSE
The poet,
They give the words a meadow color
evoke memories in torn maps
does not believe in the miracles of the Mountain Fairies
of the world forgives love!
The poet cooks the word
in the magic of poetry,
in the chain the verses of the verses
stigmatizes renegades
with the measure of memory
in the arboreal fireplace.
Poet, in verse
the storm and the sun in the sun bring,
the figures are planted with love,
under the word
it bakes a world
that you don’t know
fused into crystal…
on the poetic harp you compress it.
The poet dreams
Aphrodite in the light of the lantern,
and he engraves the stalagmites in the cave
in the poetry book
AFTER CENTURIES
After centuries we will get drunk
On the salty altar
we will remember your escape in the spring,
the colors will change,
there will be neither red, nor black, nor green
it will be only blue;
there will be no age, only death
neither school, nor court, nor work,
the whole thing will be like a game…
there will be sea in overtime
life will develop there in the depths,
ships will sail without gas
my dear
The air will be polluted
and the oxygen will be rarefied,
rain will not fall, nor snow, nor typhoon
there won’t be, everything will be the same
in ruins of centuries,
abandoned houses that people are looking for,
fierce wars will be fought
they will cry: bread, air and palaces
with your absence,
that day will come after a few centuries,
where you and I will eat in glass dishes
and we will knit the verses
on the silk fabric,
they will be fed to the spotted birds
and drunk, that day will come very soon,
my love…
these verses will be: proof of a love.
Lan Qyqalla, graduated from the Faculty of Philology in the branch of Albanian language and literature in Prishtina, from Republika of Kosovo. He is a professor of the Albanian language in the Gymnasium. He has written in many newspapers, portals, Radio, TV, and Magazines in the Albanian language and in English, Romanian, Francophone, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Greek, Swedish, Hindu, Spanish, and Korean.
Antelope Field There are antelope in the field down the road. Okay, well maybe not antelope, but nyala or oryx. & maybe it’s not a field but a patch of garden which in reality is too small for the eland & in reality is not even a garden but a window box in which the cat sits soaking up the sun. & since I don’t have a window or a cat it’s quite possible that this scene from the wilds is nothing more than a screensaver that comes on after I’ve been away from the PC for at least three minutes. Which I haven’t been, I’ve been sitting here all the time. So maybe, just maybe, it all comes down to a plasma rectangle that is framed by tool- & scroll-bars but is otherwise entirely white except for the two words floating at the top. Field. Antelope. Putsch He picked up whatever thoughts were upper- most in his mind at the time ran with them for a while & then discarded them as if they were the children of a past regime. Nijinski reminisces Exuberance is in an eye much more beholden to the magic of the mo- ment than to the pattern of the dance. Inside knowledge Or: knowing where the bodies are buried. Or: knowing when the berries are bodied. On Journeys The shape of the journey has something to do with color. A small part but important. The color has to do with the shape of those things you are looking for. Also important, not so small. The taste lies on your tongue. Sound is restricted by allowing one album to come along with you. Either earphone music or that playlist in your mind cycling through an endless loop.
Call Me Well Again
I’ve survived another you
saliva infectious
dreary and shopworn
I tear through the streets wildly
search for
someone’s discarded shred of home
soft sheets
a fireplace perhaps
light operatic music
it’s just a fantasy
non-existent
any minute your truck will come barreling through
my thoughts of salvation
I’ll get by on a lower dosage
of you
We’ll cut it down to three days a week
I’ll end up stalking you
grip the light post
to climb the rim of the dumpster
try to peer in
your window
You’re agitated now
I’m so low I’m a slinking
belly scraping beggar
no real reason I’m lingering outside
in thirty-five degrees
wearing a denim jacket
you shuffle me to the truck
I’m edging away
from two failed marriages
put it all on them
but it was me me me
When I’m well again
I’ll come calling
fresh as babies’ skin
holding a tray of Starbucks
While I Wait for my Lover
The buzz and hum of New York City
fills the air
I tuck into a restaurant for cover
small
Italian
quiet
The couple at the table next to me
sort through sonogram prints
I feel a pang of jealousy at
the little fetus forming in this woman’s
belly
My lover
late – and certainly not mine alone
has no interest in children
For his sake
I forego this
I cannot help but stare
longingly into the abyss of those
black and whites
that little heart
tiny head
this embryo I turn my body
away from
for martyrdom
yet it’s the thing that calls to me
from some primal part of
my makeup
I’m on the edge now
sacrificing the eggs
I feel bouncing around
in my uterus
for some blind pact
that later seals the deal
of which we will be much
happier
together
without kids
While I Wait for my Lover (Cont.)
The woman feels my eyes
says it’s a boy
smiles uncontrollably
I worm around in my seat
the couple finally gone
I am left alone
and this is how it will be
as I decided I’ve passed that exit
many many highways before
I’ll just wait for my lover to show up
and order us scotch on the rocks
for the long pull of loneliness
has begun to root
What Will Your Mother Say
When she finds your corpse
with foam bubbling
down your chin
eyes sunk deep
in your sockets
black spreading around
your lids and mouth
the needle still stuck
frozen
You
in your aloneness
You
in your dying
As your mother cracks open
lays across you
the spoon now cold
your spirit beats against the window
pleads
with God
to let you
back in
To see her in a pile
of grief and longing
so deep
your soul evaporates
into the pain
What will she tell
your siblings
the school
the bus driver
the crossing guard
it was an accident
always is
Wait for the autopsy
to understand
what went wrong
deep in the gully of absent parenting
divorce
boyfriend fondlers
What Will Your Mother Say (Cont.)
booze
cigs
marijuana
heroine
here……..
As you lay hardened
frothing
a slow last milky tear oozing
She still wants you
she begs
to glue you
for a day – just one day
even if it’s your druggy lean against the wall
eyes open to a slit
turtle movements
slurred speech
if just that…than the hell of this
to speak of you
now
in your deadness
warning a storm warning the butterflies in my stomach announced the summer plan to intercept continuous distance hair fell on hair the sky turns red as if it knows everything in advance my hair fell for the first time on your comb which you will never use again Basement Human is the basement of the toilet room Tenement maze of history and stories No animal in the world has ever died for its cage before No animal has invented aerial bombs To first Octobers number Suck my death an unborn kitten is knocking at the church of a torn belly the future flows like sperm from the wall of the gateway my dead lover gets stuck in my throat where his cock used to hide during blowjob I dream of having my throat fucked by a nuclear bomb I dream in my dreams that instead of a strap-on a hydrogen bomb will stick out of my ass I know that god will not pour anything into my balls during a handjob mosquitoes and military pilots meanwhile fly towards the scent of blood not a single military man gave me flowers only somewhere in the dark a muscular sergeant said: hey fag suck my dick like before death what if the ammunition depot where I'm already being fucked by a group of soldiers will explode from the fact that I'm so hot and sexy suddenly I will destroy the army and piss all the military factories with my blood suddenly I really will be fucked in a minute by the last soldier in the history of mankind in the meantime they fuck me in all the cracks and call me a fag I wonder if the soldiers have wives I wonder how many lovers smeared the mouths of soldiers' wives with sperm I wonder how many soldiers kissed their wives on the lips after that I wonder how many nuclear bombs are produced in secrecy I would like to grow longer hair and dye it blonde the truth is hidden in the details of my anus god fuck us all with your voice we are tired of the silence of the red buttons after which a nuclear explosion will follow after fucking a new nuclear bomb will be born in me [?] Brown town In the heart of earthy hues, Brown town, A needle threads life's tapestry, Brown town, A need, a yearning palpable. People encircle, form clay figures, Silent echoes of existence, Seated, molded by time's unseen hands. Within, dwell stories untold, Brown town, Clay figures poised in quiet contemplation, Sculpted reflections of shared moments. my lover asked my lover asked me when i first saw porn it would be better if he asked something simpler, like how many times we quarrel with my husband (sometimes it seems to me that love is too abstract a word for our painfully non-abstract world) my lover finally pissed me off when he started talking about the non-binary nature of human nature - I call you bitch to suck and not destroy our homosexual intimacy with the philosophy, fag, - I said to my lover while he turned into a statue my lover is a beautiful antique statue but alas the statues don't have blood my professional skills as a bloodsucker are now in question my lover its: not reacted to my bites and slaps for a day it seems to me that he sailed away into the cast-iron tunnel of the night it seems to me that my lover dreams of flowers in ball gowns and without graves death knocked on the back of the room and asked: whose house is this? and this ruined house is now a ruin the anti-missile installation of the heart has failed the night in the eyes of my dead dead man will no longer dissolve even explosions won't wake my lover red sky like a bud revealed death god's assistant pressed the wrong button again аll in vain We Free Freends Friends French fries With self burger We distance We running Running away from each other vegetable garden my body is a vegetable garden in which nothing grows we're all hungry without the smell of fresh meat and cum generals fuck tomorrow's dead for free saving on prostitutes sun umbrellas and winter sleighs are in vain sho(r)t (hi)story I want the last nuclear bomb to explode inside my ass the sun warms the cold body of my lover shot by dawn the trenches are screaming but no historian will tell about our buried feelings in the future the stones are screaming but only the wind drowning in the river will tell about our buried lovers No title the station of tears breaks out and thirst falls from the inside of the heart let's go to my house, drink my blood, burst my capillaries, tear my ass, tear out my tonsils meanwhile god's deputy keeps pushing the wrong buttons onlyfa the steak burned inside my stomach the gun kills me but nothing will come out of my vagina we drink only sperm my eggs and balls strive for your grape nipple still life of the world during the continuous noise of a siren we drink only tears one cocku you drink the silence of my moan and I feel uneasy about spring which hasn’t come either part-time part-time job being naked in the pristine ruins of houses